Apologies for not posting, I promise I’ll get posting original content more regularly next week. In the meantime, I’ll be posting some interesting content I’ve found from around the web.
You know it’s a big day today: people across the USA are lining up in front of Apple stores and AT&T stores to buy the most-hyped consumer electronics product ever. Pogue thinks the iPhone lives up to its hype, and Mossberg in his review seems to like the product quite a bit.
Ah, wait, I just found Pogue’s video review over on YouTube, and it’s tons more entertaining than Mossberg’s. Check it out:
More neat audio and video from around the web on this site this week. Stay tuned.
Just a cute little comic (via) to leave you with for this bright and sunny weekend. Because I’m in a cute and sentimental mood.
I’m at OpenCities all weekend, come find me there. Wait, did you just say that you don’t know what OpenCities is all about? Well, time to dosomereading.
Not entirely on purpose, the majority of the posts on this site this week will deal with lifestyle issues such as business, relationships, and work-life balance. Of course, this wasn’t entirely planned: I just have a few drafts in my CMS that I feel I should post eventually, and this just seems like the right week.
For those of you who have been following Squandrous, you know that I linked to a video of a great talk by designer Stefan Sagmeister that I found over at TED Talks that really had a profound effect on me. For those of you who haven’t seen it yet, do be sure to click on the link above and check it out.
Apart from the fact that Sagmeister did a wonderful job in showing how design can make people happy — the NY subway work by TRUE is particularly fantastic — and the fact that he’s remarkably humorous in his understated delivery, he also raises some fantastic points on the philosophy of life and how work can make you happy.
Most people have been focusing on the list from Sagmeister’s diary of all the things he has learned, and rightly so. Here it is for those of you who were trying to jot it down really quickly during the video:
Complaining is silly. Either act or forget.
Thinking life will be better in the future is stupid. I have to live now.
Being not truthful works against me.
Helping other people helps me.
Organizing a charity group is surprisingly easy.
Everything I do always comes back to me.
Drugs feel great in the beginning and become a drag later on.
Over time I get used to everything and start taking if for granted.
Money does not make me happy.
Traveling alone is helpful for a new perspective on life.
Assuming is stifling.
Keeping a diary supports my personal development.
Trying to look good limits my life.
Worrying solves nothing.
Material luxuries are best enjoyed in small doses.
Having guts always works out for me.
What I want to focus upon, however, is Sagmeister’s list of what he likes about his job. While he was speaking specifically about design jobs, what he mentions in the presentation is easily extrapolated into other domains:
Thinking about ideas and content freely - with the deadline far away. Whether you’re an accountant, an engineer, a writer, or a car salesman, the freedom to think and act creatively about your everyday tasks is extremely important in order to keep you job feeling fresh and exciting.
Working without interruption on a single project. In a world where multi-tasking is the norm, the latitude to focus your energies on specific task is rare. Yet, taking ownership of a specific task, however large or small, and devoting your attention to that task is a key component of personal job satisfaction.
Using a wide variety of tools and techniques. As Sagmeister mentioned in his talk, happiness at work means not always having to stare at the computer screen. But even for those who don’t use a computer as their everyday work tool, having the flexibility to not only choose the right tool or technique for the job, but also experiment and try new tools and techniques will increase productivity, and which in turn produces result-driven happiness.
Traveling to new places. Travel here does not necessarily mean jumping on an airplane and going to foreign lands; that gets tedious after a while. Traveling to new places in any line of work means breaking out of routine physical and mental environments: to explore a part of a problem which you have not yet considered. Exploration leads to new learning, which in turn leads to personal accomplishment.
Working on projects that matter to me. While everyone does not have the possibility to pick their tasks, it is evident that choosing what you work on is inherently more satisfying because it is of personal interest to you.
Having things come back from the printer done well. Every single one of us doesn’t have a printer that comes back to us with results, but everyone thrives on seeing their work completed and making some kind of impact. Seeing your completed work and receiving feedback is key to job satisfaction.
Several of my friends have remarked that I seem more energetic and happier since I started the whole consulting gig. Now that I think of it, it makes sense: my new line of work corresponds to every single one of the items on Sagmeister’s list above. I am not only encouraged to think creatively, but I am given freedom to push boundaries and think outside the proverbial box. I use my computer, paper, sticky notes, and several other kinds of tools, I travel extensively, I get to see the results of my work being used productively, and most importantly, I truly believe in all the work I’m doing.
Sagmeister was extremely right in his talk: design definitely can make you happy. What he forgot to mention is that if you’re not a designer, aspects of your work can make you happy as well.
This is going to be one of the shortest posts I have written in a while, and the content is blatantly ripped off of someone else, but if there’s one thought I want you all to have going into the weekend, I want it to be this one:
In the meantime, I would suggest that all of you find your “accordion” — that thing that makes you try out life’s little detours — and use it to practice your own random acts of kindness and senseless acts of beauty. The rewards are astonishing.
Pedro Almodovar’s Volver — which was met quite enthusiastically by crowds at the Toronto International Film Festival last year — was just another notch on the internationally acclaimed Spanish filmmaker’s belt. Having directed some of the most talked-about films of the decade, Almodovar’s cinematic deftness has brought him critical acclaim but also intense scrutiny: his movies often pit him against conservative critics in his home country because of their tendency to question the ‘Spanish identity’.
Of course, what Almodovar is best known for is the portrayal of women — most often the protagonists and central characters of his films — in each of his cinematic masterpieces (and even some of his duds). Having worked with stars such as Penelope Cruz in Volver and All About My Mother and Marisa Paredes in The Flower of My Secret and again in All About My Mother, Almodovar has infused his playful aesthetic with powerful female roles.
Beginning this Friday, Cinematheque Ontario is presenting a showcase of Almodovar’s films coupled with films that have inspired his work, in their new programme Bricolage and the Divas: Almodovar Meets Hollywood’s Golden Age. The programme will let cineastes in Toronto explore the connection between the Spanish director’s women characters and Hollywood’s legendary divas.
Bricolage and the Divas is a ten-day programme comprised of double bills picked by Almodovar himself. And while the legendary Hollywood films are not direct inspirations for the Spanish director’s movies that accompany them in each double feature, it is clear that Almodovar has unapologetically repurposed films such as All About Eve and Rich and Famous in the ways that he crafts his often surreal tales centered around beautiful and strong leading ladies.
Almodovar’s symbiotic relationship with American cinema functions largely through his appropriation of great female performance. He has molded many of this generation’s boldest international stars: Carmen Maura, Marisa Paredes, Cecilia Roth, Penelope Cruz, Rossy de Palma, Chus Lampreave … the list goes on. They have become some of cinema’s greatest divas by channeling and making contemporary the pain, suffering, and will to overcome heartbreak that first animated the very idea of cinematic melodrama.
For many film fans in Toronto, the Bricolage and the Divas programme will not only present an opportunity to see Almodovar classics such as Labyrinth of Passion and Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown on the big screen again, but also to see stars like Joan Crawford and Gregory Peck light up the cinema in Johnny Guitar and Duel in the Sun respectively. To say that I highly recommend any one of these films is an understatement: I consider them a necessary part of any movie enthusiast’s repertoire.
By now, everyone has heard about the fiasco that has accompanied the launch of the design of the new London 2012 logo. In fact, I haven’t seen this kind of public outcry about a logo since the Toronto Unlimited logo kerfuffle from a couple of years ago.
However, unlike the Toronto Unlimited campaign — which I learned to love after seeing the accompanying brand launch video and the whole idea behind the swoosh-like design — the London 2012 logo doesn’t look like it will grow on me. First of all, it doesn’t say ‘London’ or ‘sports’ to me at all. The launch video is seizure-inducing and not very coherent, and the design of the whole campaign definitely does not instill connection with the city or the games.
Now, I understand that everyone has their own preferences, so I’m not going to use this whole post to complain about the design. What I am going to do is question the validity of paying over $850,000 to a design firm to come up with a logo that is supposed to represent the citizens of a city. While there is merit in getting professionals to create corporate brand identity, I do feel that the best way to get the true sentiment of the people in a city is by getting those same people to do some design work themselves. For free.
The London Paper had a contest for its readers to design an alternative London 2012 logo, and while many of the designs were pedantic and uninspired, they at least told a story as to what is truly important to Londoners.
As you can see from the examples in the paper, every single one of these designs says either “London” or “sports” or “Olympics” -and sometimes all three- very powerfully, which is something the current logo fails to do. Of course, these are but a few of the examples, and they all need a bit of refinement before they can be rolled out to the public as the official identity of the 2012 games, but they are each examples of the passion Londoners have for their city — something completely missing from the current London 2012 identity right now.
My suggestion? Next time, get the public to design their concept of the logo. Offer the winner a prize (tickets to the Olympic venues?) and a chance to work with a professional PR firm to work with the official logo, which would end up costing much less than the close-to-million-dollars that the current effort cost. It’s not a revolutionary idea, but it’s one that the London 2012 organizers must have forgotten before jumping into their branding exercise.
ANOTHER UPDATE: The Telegraph has a whole list of great logo submissions by Londoners. The submissions by Chris Voysey and James Wren are particularly inspired.
It’s Sunday morning, I’m at the airport about get on a flight back to Toronto, and I’m frustrated by the amount of email sitting in my inbox. In the past 12 hours since I last checked my mail, I have received 278 new emails (and that’s low compared to some of the other days this week) and none of those are spam: they’re all messages I need to read, file, reply to, or put into action.
For those of you who know me well, you know I like keeping my inbox at zero messages. I label my email quickly and effectively and then reply or take action as required and when I have time. This is a good setup in general, and I usually clear out my various ‘reply’ and ‘action’ labels in good time. These days, however, I’m spending so much time filing and sorting emails that I have little-to-no time to actually respond or react to these emails. Needless to say, I’m swamped. Overwhelmed. Exhausted. And more and more, I want to declare email bankruptcy.
Everyone these days has written about email bankruptcy [Google, Technorati] and I’ve been scoffing at most of them. Once you have a system, keeping up with email should be a breeze, right? Wrong. I’m quickly feeling inundated these days, and I think Merlin Mann hit the nail on the head with his recent post about the false hope of email bankruptcy:
Email is such a funny thing. People hand you these single little messages that are no heavier than a river pebble. But it doesn’t take long until you have acquired a pile of pebbles that’s taller than you and heavier than you could ever hope to move, even if you wanted to do it over a few dozen trips. But for the person who took the time to hand you their pebble, it seems outrageous that you can’t handle that one tiny thing. “What ‘pile’? It’s just a f**king pebble!”
Instead of declaring email bankruptcy, I’ve done some reflection and realized that the problem isn’t that I can’t handle large amounts of correspondence. Instead, I’ve realized that most of the people around me — coworkers, friends, associates, clients — are using email to do things that should otherwise be done through other kinds of communication channels.
Collaborative Documents Right now, as it stands, a significant chunk of the emails in my inbox say something like “comments on draft 9 of so-and-so document.” I’ve been telling people that collaborating on documentation is absolutely horrendous when attempted by email. Google Documents does this quite easily and effectively, and even better, why not just set up a wiki? They’re so easy to use, and reduce clutter and junk in my inbox.
Scheduling and Calendars Need to remind me about events, meetings, parties, something? Set up a Google Calendar. Better yet, let me grab an .ics file when you create the event so I can add it to iCal. That way you don’t have to email me four times to remind me about coffee tomorrow. Trying to schedule a good time for a get-together? You can use a wiki again, or services like MeetWithApproval.com. Coordinating a meeting with twenty people over email just doesn’t work.
Life Updates I love the fact that you’re having a blast on your vacation in Botswana or that your mission work in Thailand is proving to be exciting. I just don’t need to receive three emails (each with at least 10mbs of photos attached to them) a week about it all. Especially since you’re just writing one long update and sending it to all 124 people on your mailing list. If you’re writing a special message to me, I understand. If not, put your updates up on a blog and tell everyone to subscribe to the feed or at least bookmark the site. That way my mailbox doesn’t get inundated and my email address isn’t broadcasted to every other person you know.
Major Time-Sensitive Discussions I’ve never been a fan of random chit-chat on the phone, and to tell you the truth, I avoid phone conversations whenever possible. But if we need to discuss something important, the asynchronous exchange of ideas offered by email isn’t quite the best way of accomplishing results. Pick up the phone (or Skype, whatever) and let’s talk about it.
Press-Releases I get inundated with press-releases and offers from PR companies, and because so many of them end up being clutter in my inbox, I tend to delete most of them without looking them over. This is bad for the PR company because their message isn’t being delivered, but also bad for me because I miss out on a lot of otherwise free offers. Solution: set up an RSS feed for all the releases you’d normally send to me by email. That way, important headlines will jump out at me, and you don’t have to keep sending all those silly emails to everyone on your mailing lists.
So I’ve decided not to declare email bankruptcy. Instead, I’m going to hope that people read this and contact me in ways that are more manageable, and I’m going to apologize to those of you who are still awaiting a reply from me. I’m still working on moving my pile, one pebble at a time.
The Webby Awards have a great tradition where all the winners get to make an acceptance speech but are capped at a maximum of five words. Creating this maximum length for a speech makes each winner have to judiciously choose the words and messages that will represent themselves. I think it’s a great idea.
Since I’m really busy with work this week and can’t really sit down and write a very original post (and because I don’t want to leave this site stagnant) I’m making a quick list of my favorite ‘five-word-speeches’ from this year’s Webby Awards below. You can see all the speeches at the Webby Awards speeches page.
Here’s a quick list of what I found to be quite clever…
Artist of the Year Beastie Boys: Can anyone fix my computer?
Sports The Reggie Bush Project: Finally, a Bush everyone loves.
Youth Nick.com: Have sex, make more kids.
Professional Services Mindflood Seduction: Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet.
Magazine Salon.com: The Pulitzers are history.
Financial Services CNNMoney.com: More popular than Lou Dobbs.
Travel Wikitravel: No longer a Lonely Planet.
Science HubbleSite: Houston, we have a winner.
Viral Marketing Monk-e-Mail: Monkeys are funnier than people.
Animation Animator vs. Animation II: Atom: Get into our shorts.
Drama Itsallinyourhands.com: Imagine us with a budget.
Viral The Diet Coke/Mentos Experiment: 18,000,000 views. Still no dates.
Of course, the best line of the ceremony (and best use of the web?) is AgencyNet’s Five Word Speech.com. You know, because sometimes you have much more to say.
I’m not really one to advertise birthdays, but I just thought I’d mention this small birthday because it’s a pretty big landmark for me. As of today, I have now been blogging for eight years. Of course, I’ve lost most of the stuff I’ve written — especially from anytime before three years ago — but I’ve officially been blogging for eight years.
I’ve had some sort of website since 1996, but I officially jumped on the blogging bandwagon with a hand-made CMS on June 6, 1999. I started using Blogger quite quickly after that. My blog, since then, has been named Subway Tokens, On A Day Like Today, Wholesome Goodness, and now… Eloquation.
So today, I celebrate my 8th birthday. Hopefully, you’ve enjoyed some bit of it.
As many of you know, I’ve been having tons of fun playing around with Tumblr, the web-based tumblelogging application created by Davidville. I’ve been using it to host my linklog, Squandrous.com, and I have nothing but great things to say about the service. I’ve always been wary of hosted services, but so far, Tumblr has not disappointed.
That being said, there’s so much more that I want to do with Tumblr that I’ve decided to create my very own Tumblr wishlist. Despite the relative lack of updates on the blog, I know the Tumblr team is doing a lot to make the service even better, so I’m not complaining. Instead, I’m offering a few suggestions (apart from comments — I know everyone is clamoring for comments, but I don’t want them) to the team if they are ever bored and don’t have much to do:
Audio embedding: The video embedding option is fantastic already. Audio should definitely be next.
Automatic ‘reblog’ referral links: I’ve been using the ‘reblog’ function quite a bit, but it doesn’t automatically insert a link to the referring blog when I post, so I’ve had to do that by hand.
Daily digest RSS feeds: I update my Squandrous linklog obsessively, and I know it’s getting a bit annoying for some of the people who subscribe to get 20-30 posts a day in their feed readers. By offering a daily digest feed, I can not only reduce the amount of clutter people receive, but I can roll my Squandrous blog into my Eloquation feed like I used to do with del.icio.us without overwhelming my few subscribers.
Personally hosted version: Part of my reason for wanting this, I’ll admit, is because I’m scared that if anything happens to Davidville, I’m going to lose all my content, but giving me the option to host Tumblr on my own server will also reduce the load on Tumblr’s resources. Sounds like a win-win to me.
Archiving: I’d love a simple drop-down list that will take me to all posts from a particular month. Simple, but effective.
Search: Along the same lines, I’d especially love a small search box so that I can quickly find the posts I’m looking for without having to do a Google site-specific search.
So that’s my short Tumblr wishlist. And for all you guys over at Davidville, just to let you know, I’d pay for these services. Heck, even if you didn’t offer any of the options on my wishlist, I want you to know that Tumblr is such a fantastic application, I’d pay to use it now, as it is. Thanks for listening.
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